Halfway Heaven [Hardcover]

Melanie Thernstrom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 18, 1997

A few days before the end of spring term, an anonymous note arrived at The Harvard Crimson.  It contained a photograph of a student and a typed message: "Keep this picture.  There will soon be a very juicy story involving this woman."  Now, the critically acclaimed author of The Dead Girl reveals the never-before-told story of two girls--one from Ethiopia, the other from Vietnam--for whom admission to Harvard was like "halfway heaven," the stepping stone to the American Dream that would ensure success for them and their families; and how they met instead with the darkest of all fates: a tragedy that might have been prevented.

Based on Melanie Thernstrom's article in The New Yorker, here is the complete story of an unfathomable murder/suicide that shocked the country--and a groundbreaking exposÚ of one of America's most distinguished universities.  Drawing on the astonishing diaries kept by the murderer, Thernstrom reconstructs the inner life of a deeply troubled girl, struggling against isolation and depression, uncannily self-aware, and desperate for help.  Sifting through layers of responsibility and silence, Thernstrom has pieced together a story that points back to Harvard and its calculated efforts to whitewash the story, and to protect and promote its distinguished reputation at the cost of its own student body.

A work of dazzling investigative journalism and literary pathos, Halfway Heaven raises profound questions about the nature of attachment, obsession, female friendship, and the power of loneliness to transform love into destruction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Harvard prides itself on being a melting pot: the student body is 19 percent Asian, 7 percent foreigners, and more than one-third of all of the students are minorities. So when a junior from Ethiopia, Sinedu Tadesse, stabbed her roommate 45 times and then hung herself, the university came under immediate scrutiny from the press. Melanie Thernstrom approaches this tragedy with the sensitivity of someone who cares about Harvard, as an alumna and daughter of a professor, and she engages the reader with an unassuming, personal style. In the end, Halfway Heaven presents a disturbing picture of how a small, prestigious community can neglect its mentally-ill members. As quotations from Sinedu's diaries reflect all too clearly, what it takes to do well in school does not necessarily build a healthy psyche: "When I am with one person, I shake with nervousness fearing that we will run out of things to say and she or he will be bored. For math I had a teacher; for painting I had a teacher; for social life I had no one."

Also recommended is Thernstrom's first book, The Dead Girl.

From Library Journal

In May 1995, on the last day of their junior year at Harvard University, 20-year-old Ethiopian student Sinedu Tadesse murdered her roommate Trang Phuong Ho, a Vietnamese immigrant, and then committed suicide. The news shocked the Boston community but very quickly disappeared from view. Thernstrom, a Boston native, Harvard graduate, and journalist, began to follow the story. Trying to trace the origins of Sinedu's despair, Thernstrom traveled to Ethiopia to learn more about her life. But the reasons for the horrifying crime were all found in Sinedu's dorm room. Sinedu had kept a number of journals in which she expressed her struggles with isolation and depression. Delving further, Thernstrom was horrified to discover Harvard's lack of response in the face of Sinedu's desperate cries for help. Expanding on her New Yorker article, Thernstrom has not only written about a horrible crime but also has indicted Harvard University's fierce attempts to protect its distinguished reputation at the cost of its students. Recommended for most collections.
-?Sandra K. Lindheimer, Middlesex Law Lib., Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition (August 18, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385487452
• ISBN-13: 978-0385487450
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #845,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Flawed, but frighteningly accurate, August 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder (Paperback)

I attended Harvard, and was in the class of '96. I did not know Sinedu or Trang, so I cannot speak for the accuracy (or lack) in Ms Thernstrom's depiction of them. However, she is dead-on in her description of Harvard's attitude towards mental health problems and treatment. I disagree with the comments implying she had an axe to grind with Harvard; she states in the book that her own experience had been much more positive, and she said very few things I considered to be unfair or vindictive. I didn't agree with everything she says in the book, and I agree that she includes some details which are extraneous, but on the whole I was extremely surprised at the book's quality. I read it only recently, and very reluctantly, expecting it to be as exploitative as most other "true crime" books, but it is not. I will recommend this book to others, not least because of the accuracy of her description of Harvard.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, revealing account, January 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder (Paperback)

I worked at Harvard for many years and knew a number of the people Thernstrom interviewed. Her take on the institution is stunningly accurate. The book is extremely well conceived and executed. The insight that this book offers into Sinedu's incredible loneliness (not even this word properly describes her life experience) is haunting. The chapter describing the author's visit to Ethiopia and the culture differences she discovers between Ethiopian life and American life is stunning. Read it!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful consideration of a tragic event., April 5, 2001

By 

mirope "mirope" - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder (Paperback)

This is a journalist's account of a tragic murder/suicide at Harvard in 1995. The story is a fascinating insight into four contrasting cultures - the ex-patriot Vietnamese society of Trang Phuong Ho, the victim, the austere Ethopian culture of the perpetrator, Sinedu Tadesse, our own privileged and frequently xenophobic country and the rarefied and elitist world of higher education. Trang's death is obviously maddeningly senseless and deprives us all of a talented and admirable young woman. Nevertheless, I found Sinedu's story equally agonizing. Her overwhelming loneliness and alienation are wrenching to read. On the one hand, you desperately wish that someone would reach out to her. On the other, you can appreciate how offputtingly needy she was and sympathize with Trang's decision to break away from Sinedu'e smothering affection. Thernstrom does a particularly good job of investigating Sinedu's heritage, and the picture is unbearably pathetic.

The book does have its flaws. Thernstrom inserts herself far too much into the story. Her own experiences at Harvard were more distracting than helpful in setting in the context, and frankly seemed unnecessarily self-indulgent. It left me with a niggling sense that Thernstom was capitalizing on the tragedy rather than objectively reporting it. Similarly, I thought she made way too much of the fact that the administration wasn't anxious to cooperate with her story. Aside from the obvious liability issues, it seems clear that Thernstrom made it obvious that she was looking to point fingers. I personally thought she was overreaching in suggesting that this was a tragedy that should have been avoided. While colleges could no doubt do a better job of tending the psychiatric health of their students, this was in many ways an unusual confluence of events that doesn't accurately reflect typical scenarios that colleges should be anticipating. These quibbles aside, however, the book is a solid piece of journalism and a fascinating read.